13 papers in the library · 4 citations · publishing 1986-2025
Dreams, Jokes, and Songs July 31, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract This chapter explores the potential for artificial intelligence (AI) to become conscious, using the Neural Representation, Binding, and Coherence (NBC) theory as a framework. It evaluates AI models like ChatGPT, highlighting their strengths in linguistic, abstract reasoning, and multimodal capabilities while recognizing their limitations in sensory, emotional, and goal-oriented...
Dreams, Jokes, and Songs July 31, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract This chapter critically examines leading neuroscientific and philosophical theories of consciousness, comparing them to the Neural Representation, Binding, and Coherence (NBC) theory. It evaluates prominent neuroscientific models, including global workspace, information integration, and predictive processing, highlighting their strengths in addressing aspects of consciousness but...
Dreams, Jokes, and Songs July 31, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract This chapter explores the presence of consciousness in non-human entities, focusing on mammals, birds, insects, and crustaceans. Using behavioural and theoretical approaches, it evaluates consciousness through criteria such as perception, sensation, emotion, and abstract thought. The Neural Representation, Binding, and Coherence (NBC) theory provides a framework, examining mechanisms...
Dreams, Jokes, and Songs July 31, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract This chapter explores the role of time in conscious experience through the Neural Binding and Coherence (NBC) theory. It examines how neural mechanisms, such as time cells and memory units, create a biological representation of time, enabling the perception of duration, change, simultaneity, and causality. By binding time cells with sensory and abstract information, the brain forms...
Dreams, Jokes, and Songs July 31, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract This chapter describes the mechanisms behind conscious experiences, emphasizing the Neural Binding and Coherence (NBC) theory. It explores how neural representation, binding, coherence, and competition interact to create conscious phenomena. Using smell, hunger, loneliness, and self-awareness as examples, the chapter illustrates how these mechanisms contribute to component...
June 30, 2025 Paul Thagard
Abstract The chapter explores the concept of compound consciousness by using ‘cringe’ as a contemporary example. It outlines how complex experiences like cringe unify emotion, perception, and internal sensations. The author introduces the Neural Binding and Coherence (NBC) theory, which uses neural representation, binding, and coherence, to explain diverse conscious phenomena. These mechanisms...
March 7, 2019 Paul Thagard
Abstract: Minds enable people to perceive, imagine, solve problems, understand, learn, speak, reason, create, and be emotional and conscious. Competing explanations of how the mind works have identified it as soul, computer, brain, dynamical system, or social construction. This book explains minds in terms of interacting mechanisms operating at multiple levels, including the social, mental,...
Brain-Mind March 7, 2019 Paul Thagard
Abstract: Actions results from the same neural mechanisms that explain sensation, imagery, concepts, rules, analogies, emotions, and consciousness. Neural representations govern motor operations such as walking and talking. Action selection, however, goes beyond simple associations of perception and motor control, because of deliberations in humans using beliefs, desires, and intentions. The...
Brain-Mind March 7, 2019 Paul Thagard
Abstract: Rather than define the concept of mind, this chapter gives it a “three-analysis” in terms of standard examples such as various people’s intelligence; typical features such as perception, problem solving, emotions, and consciousness; and explanations such as why people behave as they do. Competing explanations of how the mind works have identified it as soul, computer, brain, dynamical...
Frontiers of Philosophy in China September 25, 2018 Paul Thagard 4 citations
This commentary discusses how philosophy and science can collaborate to understand the human mind, considering dialogues involving three philosophers and three cognitive scientists. Their topics include the relation of philosophy and science, the nature of mind, the problem of consciousness, and the existence of free will. I argue that philosophy is more general and normative than science, but...
Consciousness and Cognition November 2014 Paul Thagard, Terrence C Stewart
Consciousness results from three mechanisms: representation by firing patterns in neural populations, binding of representations into more complex representations called semantic pointers, and competition among semantic pointers to capture the most important aspects of an organism's current state. We contrast the semantic pointer competition (SPC) theory of consciousness with the hypothesis...
Cognitive Science May 6, 2006 Abninder Litt, Chris Eliasmith, Frederick W Kroon et al.
We argue that computation via quantum mechanical processes is irrelevant to explaining how brains produce thought, contrary to the ongoing speculations of many theorists. First, quantum effects do not have the temporal properties required for neural information processing. Second, there are substantial physical obstacles to any organic instantiation of quantum computation. Third, there is no...
Cognitive Science July 1, 1986 Paul Thagard
The position in the philosophy of mind called functionalism claims that mental states are to be understood in terms of their functional relationships to other mental states, not in terms of their material instantiation in any particular kind of hardware. But the argument that material instantiation is irrelevant to functional relationships is computationally naive. This paper uses recent work...